While fame and fortune may’ve eluded them, the before-their-time New York City rockers’ influence is incalculable. Two decades on, their 1996 mini-LP sounds like a hiccup in the timeline.
Jonathan Fire*Eater’s Walter Martin once interrupted a meeting with Dreamworks label brass to see about capping sales of Wolf Songs for Lambs, their major label debut, at an even half-million, lest the band grew too big, too quickly. Ambitious, but perhaps a bit premature; Wolf Songs wound up selling about 10,000 copies in the early going, a few zeros shy of the Appetite for Destruction numbers Martin was gunning for. Chutzpah isn’t everything, but it’s certainly not nothing, and what DC-to-NYC before-their-timers Jonathan Fire*Eater lacked in bankable success, they more than made up with unshakable faith in their own abilities. Through their brief, tumultuous tenure, the elegantly wasted JFE looked, acted, and frequently even sounded like heirs apparent to the big crown. They never really came close.
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